Dumbbell Overhead Shoulder Press

If you have to do ONE movement for your shoulders (barring pain/restrictions), make this one it.

The overhead dumbbell shoulder pressure is the exercise of choice of many for building and sculpting your shoulders. This is especially true if you cannot do barbell overhead press.

With the dumbbells, you can have more range of motion and really make those shoulders burn.

You can do them standing or you can do them sitting. Grab a pair of dumbbells (or one as I will show in the video below), hoist them to your shoulders, and start pressing them overhead. Keep your shoulder blades tucked back throughout the exercise to ensure stability (see video).

You don’t have to bring the dumbbells ALL the way down to your shoulders if this causes pain. You can use a shorter range of motion. Also, if you have issues with pushing in a directly vertical motion, you can lean the bench back a smidge (almost like a very inclined bench press). If you don’t have a bench, I would not compensate by leaning back while standing as this can put a lot of strain on your lower back. Just use lighter weight if this is the case.

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Hi, I’m Dr. Spencer

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